Women 2.0 Founder Friday Roundup From Balance Media

By Adda Birnir (Co-Founder & Front-End Developer, Balance Media)
Last Friday, Kate and I had the pleasure of attending the first in a series of Founder Friday networking events hosted by Women 2.0. Held at Google HQ, the evening began with a short program of speeches.

Shaherose Charania of Women 2.0 spoke about the history of the organization, their mission to promote women in the technology industry, and detailed their upcoming Startup Weekend.

Joy Marcus of DFJ Gotham (aka VC Mom), spoke about her tour de force career in various areas of the media industry. The highlight was her hilarious rendition of what it was like to serve as General Manager of DailyMotion as she took the company from zero to over a million subscribers in the US.

Katia Beauchamp, one-half of the Birchbox founding team, spoke about the challenges of raising venture capital. She told us that the best decision they made at Birchbox was to build an early version of the product and get traction before raising money. Katia also gave us a little peek under the hood of Birchbox and shared that, as of June 2011, they had 45,000 subscribers. That’s at least $450,000 in revenue per month.

Lastly, Keegan Vance Forte introduced the Founder Friday sponsor AOL Ventures, the venture wing of AOL Corp. Keegan spoke a little about the types of funding that AOL Ventures does, early stage investment in tech companies focused on consumers. She gave everyone in the room her email address and encouraged them to come ask her any questions they had about raising money, which no doubt made her quite popular!

The rest of the evening was spent in a delirious and tiring session of mix and mingle. It was like being at an all you can eat buffet where everywhere you looked were awesome women launching exciting new business and tech ventures. Kate and I left with fistfuls of business cards, exhausted and yet excited by the energy of the community.

As a way to give back to this rich community, I wanted to take a page from the playbook of some fantastic women advocates such as Rachel Sklar, Joanne Wilson, Jen Bekman (one-time advocate for women in art, now turned big-time womentrepreneur), and recent articles in the Huffington Post and Women 2.0 and parlay my own networking to help increase the visibility of the many, many women entrepreneurs doing great work all over the city and the world.

Please know that my list is woefully incomplete and haphazard because it is limited to the women that Kate and I were able to chat with. I would love to add anyone to this list that we missed, so please email me and I will get you on there! We are also planning to give this ongoing list a permanent home on the web as part of our Digital Divas initiative. More on that soon.

The List:

Ausmode
Lisa SmithBringing talented Australian fashion designers to the rest of the world.Haute Trotter
Ashlene Nand, @ashlenexoLaunching soon.myPlanit
Adrienne MeiselsThink FourSquare meets Facebook Timeline. A suite of apps that records the Who, Why, What, Where AND When of your life.Dulimoff Group
Alina DulimoffAn advisory and investment firm led by Alina Dulimoff who among many other experiences and talents has an MS in Nuclear Physics!MK Graces
Mary Keller, @mkgracesDo you need help figuring out how to dress work appropriate or decide whether you are better off buying the Ikea couch or investing in the Crate and Barrel one? Don’t have the money to hire a stylist and interior decorator? Yeah, me neither! Mary Keller to the rescue!WHYZZ
Constanze NiedermaierThe leading online resources for kid’s tough questions like, “Do the days just keep coming?” Or, “Is the moon coming home with us?” Take a peek at their mobile apps.Clear Health Costs
Jeanne PinderPinder is on a mission: to bring transparency to one of the last price opaque markets in the world. Full disclosure, Jeanne is a friend and client, but her mission is great because its good business and good for the world.Digitistas
Jennifer Mattson and Ruthie AckermanDigitistas is a skill-building and sharing group for women in and around the media industry & digital sphere. They do classes, training, and networking events. Their next event is this Thursday, “Build your Online Buzz: Expert Advice on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare & Blogs.”

About the guest blogger: Adda Birnir is a front-end developer and co-founder with Kate Reyes Balance Media, a women-led client services and product development company based in New York. Her principal interests are digital media, progressive journalism, art, and infographics. Check out her website at here. Follow her on Twitter at @builtbybalance.